A King Ensnared, A Historical Novel of Scotland (The Stewart Chronicles Book 1)

by Tomlin, J. R.

  The king’s face twitched at the remark, but he nodded a pleasant enough farewell. “Gentlemen, I expect you to be ready at daybreak. We will hold the way. A man’s glory is in battle. Remember it.”

  A noise like a mountain coming down shook the night as James slogged through the muck. He turned toward the wall, frowning. When had they begun using the cannon at night? The monstrous thing was dangerous enough during the day. The huge one called London had blown up the first time it was used and killed the four men who were firing it. But the stone it fired had arched over the wall and the noise when it hit had rocked even the walls of the city.

  The rain had begun to turn cold as the siege crept into September. He absently rubbed at the tender scar on his arm. Certes, de Barbazan would be desperate to defend the tunnel he was using for their attacks. Dozens of King Henry’s miners had been killed. It could be a dire fight.

  Yawning, he let Iain strip him out of his sopping clothes and towel his hair. As James stretched out in his bed, he said, “You will wait here for me to return tomorrow.”

  “What? But—”

  “The king is not taking squires with us into the mine. There isn’t room for enough fighters.” James sighed and rolled over onto his side, pulling his cover up to his chin. “’God’s truth, I’m glad of a little fighting. I’ve wrestled and jousted with every man who doesn’t run at the sight of me. This siege has lasted too long.”

  From his pallet, Dougal huffed out a laugh that James was sure he was not intended to hear.

  When James ducked out of the tent in the morning, Sir John saluted him with his sword and fell into step beside him. The rain had stopped, but the world was sodden. Mud coated his boots and sucked at every step. He saw dark shapes of men dart between the merlons. A single crossbow bolt thudded into the cover of the turtle. This would be no surprise attack. Sire de Barbazan would be waiting for them.

  In the silver light of dawn, the opening of the mine was a black, gaping maw beneath the shelter of the turtle. Duke Philip hunched on one knee on a pile of oak beams, peering within. King Henry crossed his arms as James pushed his way through the miners carrying huge coils of rope and pick axes to bring down the barrier and the walls of the tunnels de Barbazan had dug and past scores of knights.

  A footman trotted out of the dark opening, holding a torch aloft. “The barrier is in place, Your Grace,” he reported. “We killed their guards, but the fight had to have been heard. It was not silent.”

  “Form up!” King Henry drew his sword. “We mean to take this city, and the evil men who stand in our way will not stop us.”

  James almost snorted but held his reaction in as he picked up one of the torches piled by the opening and stuck it to the footman’s. Several knights did the same, and the footman led the way.

  The top of the tunnel was bathed in soft morning light, but it grew smaller behind them as they went into the pitch black. Their footsteps echoed off the dirt walls, and light from their torches flickered into weird shapes. A drop of water seeped through James’s helm to run down his face, and they breathed in the smell of wet earth. His first step into the water was like ice. He could feel the cold creep up his legs as they splashed further and the light of their torches glistened on the ripples.

  Almost laughing in relief, he saw a pool of light ahead, torches stuck into rough sconces in the wall and heavy beams hammered together to make a chest-high barrier Water flowed around the feet of a dozen footmen, who held pikes and stared ahead as they kept guard for an attack.

  Water lapped at his legs as he sloshed his way to the barrier. His foot slipped in the sludge, but he caught himself with a hand on the wall. A shouted echoed from around a dark corner. The torchlight danced and shone against wet cuirasses and helms.

  “Bring it down,” King Henry shouted to the miners.

  A dozen men rushed up to it and started to swing their axes. Two of them ripped into the same beam and jerked it free. When it smacked into the water, water washed up as high as their hips.

  Another shout from the darkness sounded nearer: “Sus! Sus, mes amis!”

  Now four miners worked on the same place and jerked another beam loose. The rampart was now no higher than a man’s knee.

  James could hear the slapping of men’s feet in the water; he knew it must be dozens of them to be so loud. Harnesses and weapons rattled. James pulled his sword and held it low and ready. One of the miners, frantically fleeing back the way they had come, knocked into him, but James gave him a shove the way he was going.

  His hand twitched around his hilt.

  King Henry and Duke Philip both had their blades free. The torchlight wavered on the swords like golden flames as they crouched near the opening in the barrier. James eased closer, and his breath hitched. Then there was no more time to think. The enemy advanced at a run and boiled through the narrow opening. “Fida muris usque ad mures!” they screamed as they came. “Sus! Sus!”

  James felt a queasy fluttering in his stomach as he evaded a blade and then plunged his sword with all of his force into the man’s belly. It went through steel and muscle and bone. King Henry was laying about him with his sword, a look of battle madness on his face. James backed up a step. If he died, he didn’t want it to be to Henry’s sword.

  “St. George! St. George and King Henry!” men all around him were shouting, and their cries mixed with the shouts of their enemies.

  James saw the duke catch a man-at-arms full in the neck with his sword, nearly taking off his head as the fool ran by him. A halberd whooshed at James from the right, and he barely had time to drop to his knees as it hissed over his head. He jumped to his feet and slammed the pike aside. The Armagnac raised the halberd high for another swing, lost his footing in the slippery mud and fell flat on his back. James made a sweeping side cut and blood gushed from his enemy’s throat.

  James looked around for a moment, gasping for breath and dizzy from the excitement. King Henry was surrounded by three enemies, but he lopped the hand off the first man who swung at him and raked his sword across the belly of the next on a back slash. An English knight lay slumped on his stomach across the barrier, a pike buried in his back. When James saw one of the Armagnac run up and grab at the haft of the weapon, he charged.

  His prey met him, sword raised, flickering light catching on the metal. He had immense shoulders and was wearing a polished cuirass that was splattered with blood. James stepped forward, his sword coming in hard at the Armagnac’s belly, but the knight angled his blade in a block and then swept his sword up and around. James met it with a blow that jarred up to his shoulders. Their swords slid and locked, James helm to helm with his opponent.

  They broke apart, and James gulped for air as they circled. The Armagnac’s blade whipped toward James’s shoulder, but he blocked. When the knight tried a cut from the other side, James swept his sword, and it squealed as it scraped across the knight’s steel-encased arm.

  Then the two traded blows, one after another, faster and faster. James wasn’t sure he could defeat the man. He was strong—and fast. James moved, flinching at a hard strike, and turned to the side. The man gave a grunt of triumph as he followed James forward, but James was already moving. He rammed his shoulder into the man’s chest. The man stumbled, off balance, and James looped his leg behind the man’s knee to dump him on his arse in the water. He aimed his sword down through the narrow opening in the knight’s helm and pushed it home with all of his weight.

  Afterwards, it seemed to James as though he dreamt that long fight. Side by side with King Henry and Duke Philip and the score of men-at-arms still standing, he swung and dodged and parried and stabbed. James gritted his jaws shut on his own war cry as men around him shouted, “St. George and King Henry!” They trampled on bodies that had fallen. The Armagnacs’ own barrier worked against them but they kept coming. One hacked with a halberd so hard he lifted an English knight off his feet. James scythed him down from behind. Then there was another. And another.

  Du
ke Philip chopped at a shield until it flew to pieces and then hewed the man in the face. One of the Armagnacs fled from the duke’s blade, tossing away his sword as he ran. The charge broke as another followed. Suddenly, they were throwing down their weapons and running from the barricade. At the turn in the tunnel, one of the men grabbed two of his fellows and tried to form a line. A few more turned to stand with them, but the duke leapt through the gap. James and King Henry followed with their men streaming behind, shouting, “King Henry!” Then those few were fleeing too.

  “Halt!” King Henry called to his men who ran in pursuit. “Find the miners! I want that counter-tunnel closed.”

  James sheathed his sword. His arms were numb from weariness, and he bent to rest his hands on his knees as Henry strode past him back to the barrier. In a minute, the miners were running up, talking and laughing in triumph as they fastened ropes around beams and loosened them with their pick axes. “Back, my lord,” one said to him, so he straightened and walked dazedly toward the others. Henry and Philip were squatting as they waited, surrounded by their men.

  Behind him, James heard a groan like the earth was in pain and a tremendous craaaack. A gust of dirt billowed. When the miners dashed out, covered in grime as though they had wallowed in it, Henry said, “Finish pulling down the barrier and return to your digging.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  November 1420

  The sky was gray and thick with roiling clouds. Blowing sleet stung James’s face as he walked across the camp. Beside him, Sir John jerked at his cloak and cursed at the cold. A gust of wind sent dead leaves pinwheeling around them. After five months of siege, even the Tower of London sounded like less of a punishment, dry and with a fire on the hearth and wine in a flagon, whilst he wrote one of his poems, and his household was around him. His shoulders and back ached from the constant weight of his plate armor, the tent was never truly warm, and he was sick of watered wine and boiled beef. And he was sick of war councils, where they did nothing but quarrel, whilst King Henry glowered and fumed at the city’s refusal to submit. That all of the work to undermine the walls had been for naught put the English king into a rage. Stubbornly, the walls stood and the city resisted.

  Sir John bowed, remaining outside the doorway, as James entered. The others were gathering quickly. The earls of Warwick, Salisbury, and young Suffolk joined them, standing beside the long trestle table waiting for their king to take his seat. Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Richmond entered with Duke Philip. All of them were clad in their armor, though they’d eschewed helms and gauntlets.

  Humphrey of Gloucester, the handsomest of the royal brothers, accosted him as he entered. “What are you going to do to bring those Scots out of the city? Six months we have held here and not one has submitted to your command.”

  “I told your royal brother they wouldn’t,” James said coolly, but politely. “As long as I am a prisoner, my commands have no weight.”

  Humphrey bristled. “If you mean to imply, Lord James, that you were forced—”

  “I say wha’ I mean. A king held prisoner cannot give commands.”

  King Henry turned from speaking to John of Bedford and said, “Enough. Both of you.”

  Humphrey made a particularly obsequious bow to his brother. “Thomas sent his squire to tell me that he is indisposed and cannot attend today.”

  John snorted. “Is he drunk again? Or so hungover he cannot stand?”

  Humphrey pressed his lips together and eyed his brother. “And you are never in your cups? A siege is deadly dull. I cannot blame him for seeking to break the ennui.”

  “Our brother has an enormous amount of ennui to break it would seem.”

  The Earl of Warwick grinned, and Suffolk laughed aloud.

  “I said enough. My council is no place for wrangling like fishwives. We have a city to take.” King Henry took his place in the high-backed chair at the head of the table. “Now tell me if any of you has something to say to the purpose.”

  James sat near the foot of the table, more than willing to let the English lords wrangle amongst themselves.

  The Earl of Suffolk shook his head. “The miners should be put back to work undermining the walls. That it is near winter should not make a difference. If a few lose fingers or toes, what matter?”

  “It is too late in the year for that to work,” said Duke Philip. “The tunnels are waist-deep in water from the rains. Soon we would have collapses, and they’d lose not merely fingers and toes, and for what gain?”

  “We won’t need to tunnel under the walls soon. They were eating rats for their only food a week ago.” King Henry lifted his lip in a sneer, and the scar on his cheek twisted. “Their motto is ‘Faithful to the walls if we have to eat rats’ but what when they no longer have even those? How long before they starve?”

  “I have known Sire de Barbazan for many years, sire” said Richard Beauchamp. “He will not let his men starve if matters in the city are truly so sore. Let me go and negotiate with him rather than sending heralds. I believe he will listen to me if I offer him honorable terms.”

  “They have been offered terms. And de Barbazan spat on the terms,” said Suffolk. He was a willowy man with a mass of brown curls and sharp blue eyes. He’d only inherited his title when his elder brother died at Agincourt. “The man is too God damn stubborn to even save his own people.” He jerked a rude gesture toward the walls of the city.

  Beauchamp slammed his hand down on the table and growled, “Don’t tell me about a man I knew when you were in swaddling clothes, Jack a’ Naples!”

  Suffolk jumped to his feet. “Call me that with a sword in your hand, old man.”

  James almost laughed as the veins on Beauchamp’s face popped out with his rage. Beauchamp rose. “Come outside and challenge me, if you dare!”

  “I’ll not have a sword touched in my presence!” King Henry said, and his eyes blazed. “Sit down.” When the two men continued to glare at each other, he thundered, “Now!”

  Suffolk seated himself, but Beauchamp glowered at him. Finally, he turned to the king. “Let me prove the whelp wrong, Your Grace. I know de Barbazan. Allow me to go to him.”

  Henry gave an angry look around the pavilion. “I shall not turn away even a slight chance to end this siege.” He stood, and James, along with the others, rose to his feet. “We are done. If you do not bring me a capitulation, tomorrow I have built siege towers and will assault the walls. Whatever the cost, I will have Melun. If he yields, I will take them captive and offer them treatment as befits their rank, even accept ransom.” His eyes scorched them as he spoke. “But if I must command an attack, I will give the city over to my men. Make sure that de Barbazan knows that. His knights will fight whilst so weak with hunger that they can barely raise their swords, and when the battle is done, every one of his men still alive will hang.”

  The icy wind was blowing from the north as James stepped from the pavilion, and he could smell the stink of thousands of men and horses and a foul stench from the bloody flux that had plagued the camp for a month. Atop the city walls, the banners of Melun and the Dauphin hung sodden and limp.

  Richard Beauchamp followed, shouting for heralds, his squire and his courser. James saw a man-at-arms carry a white flag on a tall pole and the earl swing heavily into his saddle. Everywhere men stopped what they were doing to watch as the party rode toward the city gate. Lyon walked slowly to stand beside James, ashen and thin from a bout with the flux that had nearly sent him to his maker.

  “Wha’ do you think, Your Grace?” he asked in a weak voice.

  “I think I pray to the Holy Virgin that he succeeds.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sir John shoved the prisoner, his hands bound behind his back, and the man stumbled into the cobblestone square. He was a dark, slender man with a thin nose and lank hair. Under a thick, dark cloak, he wore sturdy clothes, as though he had been prepared for flight. Certes, he had left that until too late. James stubbornly crossed his arms. He refused to la
y a hand on the Gascon they had hunted down, Bertrand de Chaumont. He was no gaoler. If he had to take a part in this, it would not be an active one.

  The King of England, in the center of the square, didn’t so much as look their way. So angry that his face was scarlet and the white scar on his cheek stood out like a blaze, he jabbed a finger at the knight standing proudly before him. “Who led the Armagnacs out of the city? Where are the men who murdered Jean the Fearless? Either you tell me, or you will suffer for your evil.”

  Duke Philip looked on, his face icy but his eyes dark holes of fury. But he always burned like the fires of hell when his father’s murder was mentioned.

  “My evil?” As skeletal as he was, Sire Arnault de Barbazan was lordly. Though unarmed, he wore polished armor and a surcoat of red with his coat of arms on the chest. His gray head was bare and his beard thin with age. “I defended my city as I was sworn to do.”

  James wondered if the man had any idea how dangerous it was to enrage the English king. Since the city gates had opened and Henry led them through, King Henry’s men had gathered together the soldiers who had defended the city. They were being herded like cattle outside the gates and some into boats to be taken by river to imprisonment. But James had no part in that, though he had watched for Scots and seen none of them. He had led his guards and a score of men as they searched for all of the supporters of Dauphin Charles. He and his men had searched the city twice over. The Dauphin’s friends who had aided in the murder of Jean the Fearless were nowhere to be found.

  “I agreed to surrender the city, not keep count of every man in it. It is not my fault if some have escaped.” De Barbazan made a sweeping gesture. “The city is yours. I have kept my word, and I am sure, my lord, that you will keep yours. Where are my men, and how are they to be treated?”

  “The friends of the Dau—the former Dauphin did not escape on their own. Who aided them?” Henry pulled back his lips, baring his teeth in a snarl. “Or mayhap it is your will to take their punishment for the miscreant?”